A Nicer Future : Twilight
by Scottish-Dragon
Summary: Carlisle, Esme, Alice, Jasper, Emmett, Rosalie and Edward read about Isabella Swan. Disclaimer: I Do Not Own Twilight
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I do not own Twilight and never will.  
A Nicer Future:1  
Chapter One - Arrival of the Books  
Carlisle Cullen was driving home after a shift at the local hospital in the rainy town of Forks. That is how the story starts, a Doctor driving to his family after a shift at work.  
Now the nurses at the hospital love Carlisle's looks - pale skin, blonde hair and golden eyes but everyone of them (male or female, gay or straight) hate his beloved wife: Esme.  
But what can you do: Carlisle has his mate. Once a vampire has found their mate, only death can tear them apart.  
Carlisle the vampire, sat in his car, driving home after a shift at the hospital thinking about his children, he didn't have to pay attention to the road, his eyes would do that for him.  
His daughter, Rosalie has her brave, big bear Emmett. His other daughter, future seeing Alice has her warroir emtional Jasper. He himself had his artistic Esme.  
And then you have his son. The first ever Vampire he ever created. Edward was all alone.  
He's a mind reader and he is all alone. What he needs is a book reader, intrested in the majority of music (or at least can identitfy it) and whose mind his Edward cannot read.

Alice was lying on her bed, reading a book. Of course, she was reading a book as the writer typed it.  
But because the vampire was so focused on that, she jumped and actually fell onto her bedroom floor when a bright light filled her room.  
Having fallen of her bed, Alice peered over the edge and saw four books lying peacfully on her bed as if the bed was theirs.  
Seeing nothing wrong (other than the books of course), Alice made to stand and nearly groaned again when she fell once more as a vision took over her.  
She saw her family sitting in the living room, reading the books. Her parents were happy. Alice was delightful, Emmett and Jasper were smirking and Rosalie looked angry.  
Edward wasn't doing anything, just staring out the window.  
Alice came out of the vision and said: "family meeting."  
Everyone gathered in the living room from their activities, Carlilse running from halfway up the driveway.  
"What is it?" Esme asked.  
"These books appeared in my room, and I had a vision of us reading them."  
Everyone nodded, they knew than to argue with Alice's visions, and took a seat. Jasper lifted up Twilight.  
"Better get started then" he said as he opened the book.


	2. Chapter 2

Everyone took their seats and Jasper began to read.

**Preface**

**I'D NEVER GIVEN MUCH THOUGHT TO HOW I WOULD DIE- though I'd had reason enough in the last few months - but even if I had, I would not imagined it like this. **

"Who would want to imagine their own death, that's stupid" said Rosalie as she rolled her eyes. Alice rolled her eyes at her sister and wonder whose POV these books were from.

**I stared with breathing across the long room, into the dark eyes of the hunter, and he looked pleasantly back at me. **

"Do you think it could a vampire?" asked Edward to Carlisle. Carlisle nodded.

**Surely it was a good way to die, in the place of someone else, someone I loved. Noble, even. That ought to count for something. **

"Do you know of anyone who might be coming here?" asked Esme. She didn't get out the house much so she and Rosalie and Alice were often heard gossiping.

"I think Charlie Swan's daughter might be coming to live here in the two couple of years" said Rosalie.

**I knew that if I'd never gone to Forks, I wouldn't be facing death right now. But, terrified as I was, I couldn't bring myself to regret the decision. When life offers you a dream so far beyond any of your expectation, it's not reasonable to grieve when it comes to the end. **

"This person is very selfless" noted Jasper, he could get along with a person like this.

**The hunter smiled in a friendly way as he sauntered forward to kill me. **

"That was just the preface" said Jasper.

"Who's point of view is this from?" asked Emse, as she was unsure if it were really Charlie's daughter. Why would she be getting attack by a vampire?

"Read the back" said Edward so Jasper closed the book and turned it over and read it out.

**About three things I was absolutely positive. First, Edward was a vampire. **

"Wait, what?" asked Edward, sitting straight.

"They can't mean you" said Rosalie, a growl in her throat.

**Second, there was a part of him - and I didn't know how dominant that might be - that thirsted for my blood. **

"Okay, can't be Edward, second best to Carlisle" said Emmett with a cheer in his voice.

**And third, I was unconditionally, and irrevocably in love with him. **

"Oh" chorused Jasper and Emmett.

**Isabella Swam expects her new life in Forks to be dull as the town itself. But her new classmates don't seem to mind her awkward manner and low expectations. They seem to like her - with the exception, that is, of Edward Cullen. The problem is that Bella finds itself fascinated by him. What she doesn't realise is that the closer she gets, the more she is at risk. And it might be too late to turn back. **

"So, new girl Isabella is in love with angst Edward over there" said Emmett and everyone looked to see Edward staring wide eyed at the book.

"That can't be possible" he muttered under his breath.

"Anyway, Chapter One is called **First Sight**" said Jasper.


	3. Chapter 3

FIRST SIGHT

**My mother drove me to the airport with the windows rolled down. It was seventy-five degrees in Phoenix, the sky a perfect, cloudless blue. I was wearing my favourite shirt - sleeveless, white eyelet lace; I was wearing it as a farewell gesture. My carry-on item was a parka.**

"Wow, this girl is certainly descriptive" said Emse. Carlisle agreed.

**In the Olympic Peninsula of northwest Washington State, a small town named Forks exists under a near-constant cover of clouds. It rains on this inconsequential town more than any other place in the United States of America. It was from this town and its gloomy, omnipresent shade that my mother escaped with me when I was only a few months old. It was in this town that I'd been compelled to spend a month every summer until I was fourteen. That was the year I finally put my foot down; these past three summers, my dad, Charlie, vacationed with me in California for two weeks instead.**

"Well, at least they get to see each other" said Alice. She looked around the room, Edward was still staring at the book in her husband's hands. Carlisle had Esme in her arms, as did Emmett with Rosalie. Even Jasper had his arm around Alice, Edward was all on his own.

Hopefully, these books will help him.

**It was to Forks that I now exiled myself- an action that I took with great horror. I detested Forks. I loved Phoenix. I loved the sun and the blistering heat. I loved the vigorous, sprawling city.**

"So, why is she leaving?" asked Rosalie, "humans are very strange." Edward nearly glared at her.

**"Bella," my mum said to me - the last of a thousand times - before I got on the plane. "You don't have to do this."**

"Do what?" growled Rosalie.

"Maybe if I were allowed to carry on talking, you'd find out" growled Jasper.

**My mum looks like me, except with short hair and laugh lines. I felt a spasm of panic as I stared at her wide, childlike eyes. How could I leave my loving, erratic, harebrained mother to fend for herself? Of course she had Phil now, so the bills would probably get paid, there would be food in the refrigerator, gas in her car, and someone to call when she got lost, but still...**

"She must've had to grow up rather quickly" noted Edward.

**"I want to go," I lied. I'd always been a bad liar, but I'd been saying this lie so frequently lately that it sounded almost convincing now.**

**"Tell Charlie I said hi."**

**"I will."**

**"I'll see you soon," she insisted. "You can come home whenever you want -I'll come right back as soon as you need me."**

**But I could see the sacrifice in her eyes behind the promise.**

**"Don't worry about me," I urged. "It'll be great. I love you, Mum."**

**She hugged me tightly for a minute, and then I got on the plane, and she was gone.**

"Okay, so she's leaving behind her mother so she can be happy with a man and puts her own happiness at risk" said Emmett, "are there even people like that out there?"

"Well, there is Bella" said Alice. Edward snorted. Jasper started reading again.

**It's a four-hour flight from Phoenix to Seattle, another hour in a small plane up to Port Angeles, and then an hour drive back down to Forks. Flying doesn't bother me; the hour in the car with Charlie, though, I was a little worried about.**

"He's her father, why would she be so worried?" asked Emse.

"Maybe they have an awkward relationship" said Jasper.

**Charlie had really been fairly nice about the whole thing. He seemed genuinely pleased that I was coming to live with him for the first time with any degree of permanence. He'd already gotten me registered for high school and was going to help me get a car.**

"Well, that's nice of him" said Carlisle. Rosalie and Emmett looked at each other.

**But it was sure to be awkward with Charlie. Neither of us was what anyone would call verbose, and I didn't know what there was to say regardless. I knew he was more than a little confused by my decision - like my mother before me, I hadn't made a secret of my distaste for Forks.**

"Yeah, we noticed" said Alice, Edward look at her.

**When I landed in Port Angeles, it was raining. I didn't see it as an omen- just unavoidable. I'd already said my goodbyes to the sun.**

"Ditto" joked Edward, getting many stares from his family.

**Charlie was waiting for me with the cruiser. This I was expecting, Charlie is Police Chief Swan to the good people of Forks. My primary motivation behind buying a car, despite the scarcity of my funds, was that I refused to be driven around town in a car with red and blue lights on top. Nothing slows down traffic like a cop.**

"That would be a problem for anyone with a police officer for a parent" said Emmett.

**Charlie gave me an awkward, one-armed hug when I stumbled my way off the plane.**

**"It's good to see you, Bells," he said, smiling as he automatically caught and steadied me.**

"That is not a sign of an awkward relationship" said Edward, the others nodded.

**"You haven't changed much. How's Renée?"**

**"Mom's fine. It's good to see you, too, Dad." I wasn't allowed to call him Charlie to his face.**

"No wonder, it's disrespectful" said Emse. Edward rolled his eyes, through the minds of teenagers he had his parents being called worse.

**I had only a few bags. Most of my Arizona clothes were too permeable for Washington. My mum and I had pooled our resources to supplement my winter wardrobe, but it was still scanty. It all fit easily into the trunk of the cruiser.**

"We need to get her shopping when she arrives" said Alice.

"She's just a character in a book" said Edward.

"That happens to live in a real town with a man who know to exist" said Alice. Edward glared at her.

**"I found a good car for you, really cheap," he announced when we were strapped in.**

**"What kind of car?" I was suspicious of the way he said "good car for you" as opposed to just "good car."**

"She's good" said Rosalie as her husband whistled.

"She's not real" said Edward.

**"Well, it's a truck actually, a Chevy."**

Rosalie cringed.

**"Where did you find it?"**

**"Do you remember Billy Black down at La Push?" La Push is the tiny Indian reservation on the coast.**

**"No."**

**"He used to go fishing with us during the summer," Charlie prompted.**

**That would explain why I didn't remember him. I do a good job of blocking painful, unnecessary things from my memory.**

Edward chuckled.

**"He's in a wheelchair now," Charlie continued when I didn't respond, "so he can't drive anymore, and he offered to sell me his truck cheap."**

**"What year is it?" I could see from his change of expression that this was the question he was hoping I wouldn't ask.**

**"Well, Billy's done a lot of work on the engine - it's only a few years old, really."**

"Excuses" sang Rosalie.

**I hoped he didn't think so little of me as to believe I would give up that easily. "When did he buy it?"**

**"He bought it in 1984, I think."**

**"Did he buy it new?"**

**"Well, no. I think it was new in the early sixties - or late fifties at the earliest," he admitted sheepishly.**

"She's good at making him talk, she could follow in her father's footsteps" said Alice.

"She's not real" said Edward, the family rolled their eyes.

**"Ch - Dad, I don't really know anything about cars. I wouldn't be able to fix it if anything went wrong, and I couldn't afford a mechanic..."**

**"Really, Bella, the thing runs great. They don't build them like that anymore."**

"Good, they were really slow" said Emmett, Rosalie nodded in agreement.

**The thing, I thought to myself... it had possibilities - as a nickname, at the very least.**

**"How cheap is cheap?" After all, that was the part I couldn't compromise on.**

**"Well, honey, I kind of already bought it for you. As a homecoming gift." Charlie peeked sideways at me with a hopeful expression.**

"Now that was sweet" said Alice, Esme hummed in agreement.

**Wow. Free. "You didn't need to do that, Dad. I was going to buy myself a car."**

**"I don't mind. I want you to be happy here." He was looking ahead at the road when he said this. Charlie wasn't comfortable with expressing his emotions out loud. I inherited that from him. So I was looking straight ahead as I responded.**

"So their personalities are almost identical, that's why they find it so awkward" said Carlisle, happy that he had solved it .

**"That's really nice, Dad. Thanks. I really appreciate it." No need to add that my being happy in Forks is an impossibility. He didn't need to suffer along with me. And I never looked a free truck in the mouth - or engine.**

Edward snorted.

**"Well, now, you're welcome," he mumbled,embarrassed by my thanks.**

**We exchanged a few more comments on the weather, which was wet, and that was pretty much it for conversation. We stared out the windows in silence.**

**It was beautiful, of course; I couldn't deny that. Everything was green:the trees, their trunks covered with moss, their branches hanging with a canopy of it, the ground covered with ferns. Even the air filtered down greenly through the leaves.**

"It really is a nice place to live, one the nicest places we have stayed" said Emse, wishing they could move back here soon.

**It was too green - an alien planet.**

Again, Edward snorted.

**Eventually we made it to Charlie's. He still lived in the small,two-bedroom house that he'd bought with my mother in the early days of their marriage. Those were the only kind of days their marriage had - the early ones. There, parked on the street in front of the house that never changed, was my new - well, new to me - truck. It was a faded red colour,with big, rounded fenders and a bulbous cab. To my intense surprise, I loved it.**

"Of course she would, no taste in cars at all" said Rosalie. Even though Edward believes Bella to not be real, he's shocked that he fighting the urge to rip his sister to shreds for insulting Bella.

** I didn't know if it would run, but I could see myself in , it was one of those solid iron affairs that never gets damaged -the kind you see at the scene of an accident, paint unscratched, surrounded by the pieces of the foreign car it had destroyed.**

**"Wow, Dad, I love it! Thanks!" Now my horrific day tomorrow would be just that much less dreadful. I wouldn't be faced with the choice of either walking two miles in the rain to school or accepting a ride in the Chief's cruiser.**

"I'd rather walk to human pace that drive in the truck" said Rosalie.

"Well, enjoy your walk" said Edward, before he could stop it.

**"I'm glad you like it," Charlie said gruffly,embarrassed again.**

**It took only one trip to get all my stuff upstairs. I got the west bedroom that faced out over the front yard. The room was familiar; it had been belonged to me since I was born. The wooden floor, the light blue walls, the peaked ceiling, the yellowed lace curtains around the window -these were all a part of my childhood. The only changes Charlie had ever made were switching the crib for a bed and adding a desk as I grew. The desk now held a second hand computer, with the phone line for the modem stapled along the floor to the nearest phone jack. This was a stipulation from my mother, so that we could stay in touch easily. The rocking chair from my baby days was still in the corner.**

"The room seems simple enough, cosy in fact" said Carlisle.

**There was only one small bathroom at the top of the stairs, which I would have to share with Charlie. I was trying not to dwell too much on that fact.**

The men looked confused while the women smiled.

**One of the best things about Charlie is he doesn't hover. He left me alone to unpack and get settled, a feat that would have been altogether impossible for my mother. It was nice to be alone, not to have to smile and look pleased; a relief to stare dejectedly out the window at the sheeting rain and let just a few tears escape. I wasn't in the mood to go on a real crying jag. I would save that for bedtime, when I would have to think about the coming morning.**

"Poor girl" said Emse.

"What's this dangerous thing happening tomorrow?" asked Emmett.

**Forks High School had a frightening total of only three hundred and fifty-seven - now fifty-eight - students; there were more than seven hundred people in my junior class alone back home. All of the kids here had grown up together - their grandparents had been toddlers together.**

"We more than likely watched their grandparents grow up" joked Emmett, getting laughter from his family.

**I would be the new girl from the big city, a curiosity, a freak. Maybe, if I looked like a girl from Phoenix should, I could work this to my advantage. But physically, I'd never fit in anywhere. I should be tan,sporty, blond - a volleyball player, or a cheerleader, perhaps - all the things that go with living in the valley of the sun.**

**Instead, I was ivory-skinned, without even the excuse of blue eyes or red hair, despite the constant sunshine. I had always been slender, but soft somehow, obviously not an athlete; I didn't have the necessary hand-eye coordination to play sports without humiliating myself - and harming both myself and anyone else who stood too close.**

"She sound beautiful" muttered Edward. His family decided not to say anything.

**When I finished putting my clothes in the old pine dresser, I took my bag of bathroom necessities and went to the communal bathroom to clean myself up after the day of travel. I looked at my face in the mirror as I brushed through my tangled, damp hair. Maybe it was the light, but already I looked sallower, unhealthy. My skin could be pretty - it was very clear, almost translucent-looking- but it all depended on colour. I had no colour here.**

'Perfect match' thought Alice, Edward growled at her. Jasper could feel confusion coming off Edward.

**Facing my pallid reflection in the mirror, I was forced to admit that I was lying to myself. It wasn't just physically that I'd never fit in. And if I couldn't find a niche in a school with three thousand people, what were my chances here?**

**I didn't relate well to people my age. Maybe the truth was that I didn't relate well to people, period. Even my mother, who I was closer to than anyone else on the planet, was never in harmony with me, never on exactly the same page. Sometimes I wondered if I was seeing the same things through my eyes that the rest of the world was seeing through theirs. Maybe there was a glitch in my brain. But the cause didn't matter. All that mattered was the effect. And tomorrow would be just the beginning.**

**I didn't sleep well that night, even after I was done crying. The constant whooshing of the rain and wind across the roof wouldn't fade into the background. I pulled the faded old quilt over my head, and later added the pillow, too. But I couldn't fall asleep until after midnight, when the rain finally settled into a quieter drizzle.**

**Thick fog was all I could see out my window in the morning, and I could feel the claustrophobia creeping up on me. You could never see the sky here; it was like a cage.**

**Breakfast with Charlie was a quiet event. He wished me good luck at school. I thanked him, knowing his hope was wasted. Good luck tended to avoid me. Charlie left first, off to the police station that was his wife and family. After he left, I sat at the old square oak table in one of the three unmatched chairs and examined his small kitchen, with its dark panelled walls, bright yellow cabinets, and white linoleum floor. Nothing was changed. My mother had painted the cabinets eighteen years ago in an attempt to bring some sunshine into the house. Over the small fireplace in the adjoining handkerchief-sized family room was a row of pictures. First a wedding picture of Charlie and my mum in Las Vegas, then one of the three of us in the hospital after I was born, taken by a helpful nurse, followed by the procession of my school pictures up to last year's. Those were embarrassing to look at - I would have to see what I could do to get Charlie to put them somewhere else, at least while I was living here.**

"She doesn't seem like any other teenage girl, she doesn't like looking at herself" said Emse, throwing a look to her daughters, who smiled at her.

**It was impossible, being in this house, not to realize that Charlie had never gotten over my mum. It made me uncomfortable.**

"I think that it would make any child of divorce uncomfortable" said Emmett, shocking his family at his knowledge.

**I didn't want to be too early to school, but I couldn't stay in the house anymore. I donned my jacket - which had the feel of a biohazard suit -and headed out into the rain.**

**It was just drizzling still, not enough to soak me through immediately as I reached for the house key that was always hidden under the eaves by the door, and locked up. The sloshing of my new waterproof boots was unnerving. I missed the normal crunch of gravel as I walked. I couldn't pause and admire my truck again as I wanted; I was in a hurry to get out of the misty wet that swirled around my head and clung to my hair under my hood.**

"She is very descriptive, and very good at noticing things" said Carlisle.

**Inside the truck, it was nice and dry. Either Billy or Charlie had obviously cleaned it up, but the tan upholstered seats still smelled faintly of tobacco, gasoline, and peppermint. The engine started quickly,to my relief, but loudly, roaring to life and then idling at top volume. Well, a truck this old was bound to have a flaw. The antique radio worked, a plus that I hadn't expected.**

Rosalie shook her head.

**Finding the school wasn't difficult, though I'd never been there before. The school was, like most other things, just off the highway. It was not obvious that it was a school; only the sign, which declared it to be the Forks High School, made me stop. It looked like a collection of matching houses, built with maroon-coloured bricks. There were so many trees and shrubs I couldn't see its size at first. Where was the feel of the institution? I wondered nostalgically. Where were the chain-link fences,the metal detectors?**

"Paranoid much" thought every one in the room, but Edward, who groaned at them.

**I parked in front of the first building, which had a small sign over the door reading front office. No one else was parked there, so I was sure it was off limits, but I decided I would get directions inside instead of circling around in the rain like an idiot. I stepped unwillingly out of the toasty truck cab and walked down a little stone path lined with dark hedges. I took a deep breath before opening the door. Inside, it was brightly lit, and warmer than I'd hoped. The office was small; a little waiting area with padded folding chairs, orange-flecked commercial carpet, notices and awards cluttering the walls, a big clock ticking loudly. Plants grew everywhere in large plastic pots, as if there wasn't enough greenery outside. The room was cut in half by a long counter, cluttered with wire baskets full of papers and brightly coloured flyers taped to its front. There were three desks behind the counter, one of which was manned by a large, red-haired woman wearing glasses. She was wearing a purple t-shirt, which immediately made me feel overdressed.**

"Bella could also be a writer" said Emse, "as well as a officer."

**The red-haired woman looked up. "Can I help you?"**

**"I'm Isabella Swan," I informed her, and saw the immediate awareness light her eyes. I was expected, a topic of gossip no doubt. Daughter of the Chief's flighty ex-wife, come home at last.**

**"Of course," she said. She dug through a precariously stacked pile of documents on her desk till she found the ones she was looking for. "I have your schedule right here, and a map of the school." She brought several sheets to the counter to show.**

**She went through my classes for me, highlighting the best route to each on the map, and gave me a slip to have each teacher sign, which I was to bring back at the end of the day. She smiled at me and hoped, like Charlie, that I would like it here in Forks. I smiled back as convincingly as I could.**

"She seems to try to please everyone" said Edward, a frown on his face.

**When I went back out to my truck, other students were starting to arrive. I drove around the school, following the line of traffic. I was glad to see that most of the cars were older like mine, nothing flashy. At home I'd lived in one of the few lower-income neighbourhoods that were included in the Paradise Valley District. It was a common thing to see a new Mercedes or Porsche in the student lot. The nicest car here was a shiny Volvo, and it stood out. Still, I cut the engine as soon as I was in a spot, so that the thunderous volume wouldn't draw attention to me.**

"Okay, the Edward in this book, is you. Nobody else has a shiny Volvo" said Emmett.

"I highly doubt that" said Edward.

**I looked at the map in the truck, trying to memorize it now; hopefully I wouldn't have to walk around with it stuck in front of my nose all day. I stuffed everything in my bag, slung the strap over my shoulder, and sucked in a huge breath. I can do this, I lied to myself feebly. No one was going to bite me. I finally exhaled and stepped out of the truck.**

**I kept my face pulled back into my hood as I walked to the sidewalk, crowded with teenagers. My plain black jacket didn't stand out, I noticed with relief.**

"She should want to stand out, this is confusing me. She is not acting like a normal teenage girl" said Rosalie.

**Once I got around the cafeteria, building three was easy to spot. A large black "3" was painted on a white square on the east corner. I felt my breathing gradually creeping toward hyperventilation as I approached the door. I tried holding my breath as I followed two unisex raincoats through the door.**

**The classroom was small. The people in front of me stopped just inside the door to hang up their coats on a long row of hooks. I copied them. They were two girls, one a porcelain-coloured blonde, the other also pale, with light brown hair. At least my skin wouldn't be a stand out here.**

**I took the slip up to the teacher, a tall, balding man whose desk had a nameplate identifying him as Mr. Mason. He gawked at me when he saw my name - not an encouraging response - and of course I flushed tomato red. But at least he sent me to an empty desk at the back without introducing me to the class. It was harder for my new classmates to stare at me in the back, but somehow, they managed. I kept my eyes down on the reading list the teacher had given me. It was fairly basic: Bronte, Shakespeare, Chaucer, Faulkner. I'd already read everything. That was comforting... and boring. I wondered if my mum would send me my folder of old essays, or if she would think that was cheating. I went through different arguments with her in my head while the teacher droned on.**

"Teachers do tend to drone on when you they are repeating what you have already learned" said Edward, his brothers and sisters nodded, while their parents shook their heads.

**When the bell rang, a nasal buzzing sound, a gangly boy with skin problems and hair black as an oil slick leaned across the aisle to talk to me.**

"Eww" said Rosalie.

**"You're Isabella Swan, aren't you?" He looked like the overly helpful, chess club type.**

'Double eww' thought Rosalie. Edward rolled his eyes.

**"Bella," I corrected. Everyone within a three-seat radius turned to look at me.**

**"Where's your next class?" he asked.**

**I had to check in my bag. "Um, Government, with Jefferson, in building six."**

**There was nowhere to look without meeting curious eyes.**

**"I'm headed toward building four, I could show you the way..." Definitely over-helpful. "I'm Eric," he added.**

**I smiled tentatively. "Thanks."**

**We got our jackets and headed out into the rain, which had picked up. I could have sworn several people behind us were walking close enough to eavesdrop. I hoped I wasn't getting paranoid.**

"You aren't getting paranoid, their getting nosey" said Edward.

"Humanity" said Jasper as it explained everything.

**"So, this is a lot different than Phoenix, huh?" he asked.**

**"Very."**

**"It doesn't rain much there, does it?"**

**"Three or four times a year."**

**"Wow, what must that be like?" he wondered.**

**"Sunny," I told him.**

**"You don't look very tan."**

**"My mother is part albino."**

**He studied my face apprehensively, and I sighed. It looked like clouds and a sense of humour didn't mix. A few months of this and I'd forget how to use sarcasm.**

"Keep fighting" said Jasper, who often used sarcasm.

**We walked back around the cafeteria, to the south buildings by the gym. Eric walked me right to the door, though it was clearly marked.**

"Do you think someone has a crush on the new girl?" asked Alice.

**"Well, good luck," he said as I touched the handle. "Maybe we'll have some other classes together." He sounded hopeful.**

"Yes" said Emmett.

**I smiled at him vaguely and went inside.**

**The rest of the morning passed in about the same fashion. My Trigonometry teacher, Mr. Varner, who I would have hated anyway just because of the subject he taught, was the only one who made me stand in front of the class and introduce myself. I stammered, blushed, and tripped over my own boots on the way to my seat.**

"He sounds horrible" said Alice.

**After two classes, I started to recognize several of the faces in each class. There was always someone braver than the others who would introduce themselves and ask me questions about how I was liking Forks. I tried to be diplomatic, but mostly I just lied a lot. At least I never needed the map.**

**One girl sat next to me in both Trig and Spanish, and she walked with me to the cafeteria for lunch. She was tiny, several inches shorter than my five feet four inches, but her wildly curly dark hair made up a lot of the difference between our heights. I couldn't remember her name, so I smiled and nodded as she prattled about teachers and classes. I didn't try to keep up.**

"That was nice of her" said Esme, with a smile. Carlisle nodded.

**We sat at the end of a full table with several of her friends, who she introduced to me. I forgot all their names as soon as she spoke them. They seemed impressed by her bravery in speaking to me. The boy from English, Eric, waved at me from across the room.**

"At least she's making friends" said Jasper.

**It was there, sitting in the lunchroom, trying to make conversation with seven curious strangers, that I first saw them.**

Everyone leaned toward Jasper.

**They were sitting in the corner of the cafeteria, as far away from where I sat as possible in the long room. There were five of them. They weren't talking, and they weren't eating, though they each had a tray of untouched food in front of them. They weren't gawking at me, unlike most of the other students, so it was safe to stare at them without fear of meeting an excessively interested pair of eyes. But it was none of these things that caught, and held, my attention.**

"Who are they?" asked Emmett. Jasper glared at him.

**They didn't look anything alike. Of the three boys, one was big - muscled like a serious weight lifter, with dark, curly hair. Another was taller, leaner, but still muscular, and honey blond. The last was lanky, less bulky, with untidy, bronze-coloured hair. He was more boyish than the others, who looked like they could be in college, or even teachers here rather than students.**

"Us?" asked Edward. Jasper nodded.

**The girls were opposites. The tall one was statuesque. She had a beautiful figure, the kind you saw on the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, the kind that made every girl around her take a hit on her self-esteem just by being in the same room. Her hair was golden, gently waving to the middle of her back. The short girl was pixie like, thin in the extreme, with small features. Her hair was a deep black,cropped short and pointing in every direction.**

"It's us, meaning that Bella could be Edward's mate" said Jasper. Edward stared at him.

"But she's human" he said.

"So were we, at one point" pointed out Alice. Edward stared at her.

**And yet, they were all exactly alike. Every one of them was chalky pale, the palest of all the students living in this sunless town. Paler than me, the albino. They all had very dark eyes despite the range in hair tones. They also had dark shadows under those eyes - purplish, bruise like shadows. As if they were all suffering from a sleepless night, or almost done recovering from a broken nose. Though their noses, all their features, were straight, perfect, angular.**

"We don't seem to have eaten in a while" noted Emmett.

**But all this is not why I couldn't look away.**

**I stared because their faces, so different, so similar, were all devastatingly, inhumanly beautiful. They were faces you never expected to see except perhaps on the airbrushed pages of a fashion magazine. Or painted by an old master as the face of an angel. It was hard to decide who was the most beautiful - maybe the perfect blond girl, or the bronze-haired boy.**

Everyone in the room looked at Edward. He stared at the book. Was it actually possible that Isabella Swan was to be his soul mate?

**They were all looking away - away from each other, away from the other students, away from anything in particular as far as I could tell. As I watched, the small girl rose with her tray -unopened soda, unbitten apple - and walked away with a quick, graceful lope that belonged on a runway. I watched, amazed at her lithe dancer's step, till she dumped her tray and glided through the back door, faster than I would have thought possible. My eyes darted back to the others, who sat unchanging.**

**"Who are they?" I asked the girl from my Spanish class, whose name I'd forgotten.**

**As she looked up to see who I meant - though already knowing, probably, from my tone - suddenly he looked at her, the thinner one, the boyish one, the youngest, perhaps. He looked at my neighbour for just a fraction of a second, and then his dark eyes flickered to mine.**

Edward clenched his jaw, his eyes were dark, meaning that he was hungry.

**He looked away quickly, more quickly than I could, though in a flush of embarrassment I dropped my eyes at once. In that brief flash of a glance, his face held nothing of interest - it was as if she had called his name, and he'd looked up in involuntary response, already having decided not to answer.**

"She must've said your name in her thoughts" said Carlisle. Edward hummed in agreement, still looking at the book.

**My neighbour giggled in embarrassment, looking at the table like I did.**

**"That's Edward and Emmett Cullen, and Rosalie and Jasper Hale. The one who left was Alice Cullen; they all live together with Dr. Cullen and his wife." She said this under her breath.**

**I glanced sideways at the beautiful boy, who was looking at his tray now,picking a bagel to pieces with long, pale fingers. His mouth was moving very quickly, his perfect lips barely opening. The other three still looked away, and yet I felt he was speaking quietly to them.**

"How could she see that?" asked Rosalie. Carlisle was thinking deeply, Edward was looking at Carlisle.

"Is that even possible?" he asked his father. Carlisle shrugged.

**Strange, unpopular names, I thought. The kinds of names grandparents had. But maybe that was in vogue here - small town names? I finally remembered that my neighbour was called Jessica, a perfectly common name. There were two girls named Jessica in my History class back home.**

**"They are... very nice-looking." I struggled with the conspicuous understatement.**

Edward shook his head.

**"Yes!" Jessica agreed with another giggle. "They're all together though - Emmett and Rosalie, and Jasper and Alice, I mean. And they live together." Her voice held all the shock and condemnation of the small town, I thought critically. But, if I was being honest, I had to admit that even in Phoenix, it would cause gossip.**

"I have a feeling I would hate her" said Edward. Alice nodded.

**"Which ones are the Cullens?" I asked. "They don't look related..."**

**"Oh, they're not. Dr. Cullen is really young, in his twenties or early thirties. They're all adopted. The Hales are brother and sister, twins - the blondes - and they're foster children."**

They smiled, they may not be related by DNA but they are related by blood (or in Jasper and Alice's care, spirit) and that is good enough for them.

**"They look a little old for foster children."**

They snorted at this.

**"They are now, Jasper and Rosalie are both eighteen, but they've been with Mrs. Cullen since they were eight. She's their aunt or something like that."**

**"That's really kind of nice - for them to take care of all those kids like that, when they're so young and everything."**

**"I guess so," Jessica admitted reluctantly, and I got the impression that she didn't like the doctor and his wife for some reason. With the glances she was throwing at their adopted children, I would presume the reason was jealousy. "I think that Mrs. Cullen can't have any kids, though," she added, as if that lessened their kindness.**

"What a horrible person" said Carlisle. Esme shook at her head at her husband.

**Throughout all this conversation, my eyes flickered again and again to the table where the strange family sat. They continued to look at the walls and not eat.**

**"Have they always lived in Forks?" I asked. Surely I would have noticed them on one of my summers here.**

**"No," she said in a voice that implied it should be obvious, even to a new arrival like me. "They just moved down two years ago from somewhere in Alaska."**

**I felt a surge of pity, and relief. Pity because, as beautiful as they were, they were outsiders, clearly not accepted. Relief that I wasn't the only newcomer here, and certainly not the most interesting by any standard.**

**As I examined them, the youngest, one of the Cullens, looked up and met my gaze, this time with evident curiosity in his expression. As I looked swiftly away, it seemed to me that his glance held some kind of unmet expectation.**

"I don't think I can read her mind" said Edward, his family looked at him in shock.

**"Which one is the boy with the reddish brown hair?" I asked. I peeked at him from the corner of my eye, and he was still staring at me, but not gawking like the other students had today - he had a slightly frustrated expression. I looked down again.**

"I can't read her mind" said Edward, leaning back in his chair.

**"That's Edward. He's gorgeous, of course, but don't waste your time. He doesn't date. Apparently none of the girls here are good-looking enough for him." She sniffed, a clear case of sour grapes. I wondered when he'd turned her down.**

Edward smiled.

**I bit my lip to hide my smile. Then I glanced at him again. His face was turned away, but I thought his cheek appeared lifted, as if he were smiling, too.**

**After a few more minutes, the four of them left the table together. They all were noticeably graceful - even the big, brawny one. It was unsettling to watch. The one named Edward didn't look at me again.**

"She seems to have developed a crush on you" said Carlisle, looking at Edward.

"I might developed one for her at some point, or I might eat her" said Edward.

**I sat at the table with Jessica and her friends longer than I would have if I'd been sitting alone. I was anxious not to be late for class on my first day. One of my new acquaintances, who considerately reminded me that her name was Angela, had Biology II with me the next hour. We walked to class together in silence. She was shy, too.**

"That's good" said Esme, happy that Bella had found someone like her.

**When we entered the classroom, Angela went to sit at a black-topped lab table exactly like the ones I was used to. She already had a neighbour. In fact, all the tables were filled but one. Next to the centre aisle, I recognized Edward Cullen by his unusual hair, sitting next to that single open seat.**

**As I walked down the aisle to introduce myself to the teacher and get my slip signed, I was watching him surreptitiously. Just as I passed, he suddenly went rigid in his seat. He stared at me again, meeting my eyes with the strangest expression on his face - it was hostile, furious. I looked away quickly, shocked, going red again. I stumbled over a book in the walkway and had to catch myself on the edge of a table. The girl sitting there giggled.**

**I'd noticed that his eyes were black - coal black.**

"I'm going to eat" he moaned.

"There's three more books, I highly doubt that" said Alice, concerned for her brother.

**Mr. Banner signed my slip and handed me a book with no nonsense about introductions. I could tell we were going to get along. Of course, he had no choice but to send me to the one open seat in the middle of the room. I kept my eyes down as I went to sit by him, bewildered by the antagonistic stare he'd given me.**

"First fight" sighed Emmett. Edward threw a cushion at him.

**I didn't look up as I set my book on the table and took my seat, but I saw his posture change from the corner of my eye. He was leaning away from me, sitting on the extreme edge of his chair and averting his face like he smelled something bad. Inconspicuously, I sniffed my hair. It smelled like strawberries, the scent of my favourite shampoo. It seemed an innocent enough odor. I let my hair fall over my right shoulder, making a dark curtain between us, and tried to pay attention to the teacher.**

**Unfortunately the lecture was on cellular anatomy, something I'd already studied. I took notes carefully anyway, always looking down.**

**I couldn't stop myself from peeking occasionally through the screen of my hair at the strange boy next to me. During the whole class, he never relaxed his stiff position on the edge of his chair, sitting as far from me as possible. I could see his hand on his left leg was clenched into a fist, tendons standing out under his pale skin. This, too, he never relaxed. He had the long sleeves of his white shirt pushed up to his elbows, and his forearm was surprisingly hard and muscular beneath his light skin. He wasn't nearly as slight as he'd looked next to his burly brother.**

"She's checking you out" said Rosalie.

**The class seemed to drag on longer than the others. Was it because the day was finally coming to a close, or because I was waiting for his tight fist to loosen? It never did; he continued to sit so still it looked like he wasn't breathing. What was wrong with him? Was this his normal behaviour? I questioned my judgement on Jessica's bitterness at lunch today. Maybe she was not as resentful as I'd thought.**

**It couldn't have anything to do with me. He didn't know me from Eve.**

"He wishes he were Adam" said Emmett. Edward glared at him.

**I peeked up at him one more time, and regretted it. He was glaring down at me again, his black eyes full of revulsion. As I flinched away from him, shrinking against my chair, the phrase if looks could kill suddenly ran through my mind.**

**At that moment, the bell rang loudly, making me jump, and Edward Cullen was out of his seat. Fluidly he rose - he was much taller than I'd thought - his back to me, and he was out the door before anyone else was out of their seat.**

"Could it just be her blood?" asked Alice.

"Possibly, I remember a girl who's blood smell so tasty, I couldn't leave her" said Emmett.

**I sat frozen in my seat, staring blankly after him. He was so mean. It wasn't fair. I began gathering up my things slowly, trying to block the anger that filled me, for fear my eyes would tear up. For some reason, my temper was hardwired to my tear ducts. I usually cried when I was angry, a humiliating tendency.**

**"Aren't you Isabella Swan?" a male voice asked.**

**I looked up to see a cute, baby-faced boy, his pale blond hair carefully gelled into orderly spikes, smiling at me in a friendly way. He obviously didn't think I smelled bad.**

Edward chuckled.

**"Bella," I corrected him, with a smile.**

**"I'm Mike."**

**"Hi, Mike."**

**"Do you need any help finding your next class?"**

**"I'm headed to the gym, actually. I think I can find it."**

**"That's my next class, too." He seemed thrilled, though it wasn't that big of a coincidence in a school this small.**

"Anyone else smell future stalker?" asked Jasper. Alice laughed.

**We walked to class together; he was a chatterer - he supplied most of the conversation, which made it easy for me. He'd lived in California till he was ten, so he knew how I felt about the sun. It turned out he was in my English class also. He was the nicest person I'd met today.**

**But as we were entering the gym, he asked, "So, did you stab Edward Cullen with a pencil or what? I've never seen him act like that."**

**I cringed. So I wasn't the only one who had noticed. And, apparently, that wasn't Edward Cullen's usual behaviour. I decided to play dumb.**

"Good choice" said Edward.

**"Was that the boy I sat next to in Biology?" I asked artlessly.**

**"Yes," he said. "He looked like he was in pain or something."**

Edward rubbed his throat, without noticing.

**"I don't know," I responded. "I never spoke to him."**

**"He's a weird guy." Mike lingered by me instead of heading to the dressing room. "If I were lucky enough to sit by you, I would have talked to you."**

"Stalker" someone coughed. Only Edward noticed, so someone thought it.

**I smiled at him before walking through the girls' locker room door. He was friendly and clearly admiring. But it wasn't enough to ease my irritation.**

**The Gym teacher, Coach Clapp, found me a uniform but didn't make me dress down for today's class. At home, only two years of P.E. were required. Here, P.E. was mandatory all four years. Forks was literally my personal hell on Earth.**

**I watched four volleyball games running simultaneously. Remembering how many injuries I had sustained - and inflicted - playing volleyball, I felt faintly nauseated.**

**The final bell rang at last. I walked slowly to the office to return my paperwork. The rain had drifted away, but the wind was strong, and colder. I wrapped my arms around myself.**

**When I walked into the warm office, I almost turned around and walked back out.**

"Edward in there?" asked Alice, Jasper nodded.

**Edward Cullen stood at the desk in front of me. I recognized again that tousled bronze hair. He didn't appear to notice the sound of my entrance. I stood pressed against the back wall, waiting for the receptionist to be free.**

**He was arguing with her in a low, attractive voice. I quickly picked up the gist of the argument. He was trying to trade from sixth-hour Biology to another time - any other time.**

"Attractive voice?" asked Edward. Emmett smirked.

**I just couldn't believe that this was about me. It had to be something else, something that happened before I entered the Biology room. The look on his face must have been about another aggravation entirely. It was impossible that this stranger could take such a sudden, intense dislike to me.**

"Unless I am doing it to protect her or my family, or both" said Edward.

**The door opened again, and the cold wind suddenly gusted through the room, rustling the papers on the desk, swirling my hair around my face. The girl who came in merely stepped to the desk, placed a note in the wire basket, and walked out again. But Edward Cullen's back stiffened, and he turned slowly to glare at me - his face was absurdly handsome - with piercing, hate-filled eyes. For an instant, I felt a thrill of genuine fear, raising the hair on my arms. The look only lasted a second, but it chilled me more than the freezing wind. He turned back to the receptionist.**

"Attractive, handsome. Mate, you seem to hate her and she's crushing on you" said Emmett. Edward stared at the book.

**"Never mind, then," he said hastily in a voice like velvet. "I can see that it's impossible. Thank you so much for your help." And he turned on his heel without another look at me, and disappeared out the door.**

**I went meekly to the desk, my face white for once instead of red, and handed her the signed slip.**

**"How did your first day go, dear?" the receptionist asked maternally.**

**"Fine," I lied, my voice weak. She didn't look convinced.**

"Well, she did say that she was an awful lier" said Esme.

**When I got to the truck, it was almost the last car in the lot. It seemed like a haven, already the closest thing to home I had in this damp green hole. I sat inside for a while, just staring out the windshield blankly. But soon I was cold enough to need the heater, so I turned the key and the engine roared to life. I headed back to Charlie's house, fighting tears the whole way there.**

"Well that was nice. We now know for sure that Edward is the Edward mentioned. She discovers our secret and falls in love. Edward, I think Bella is your soulmate" said Carlisle.


	4. Chapter 4

**2. OPEN BOOK**

**The next day was better... and worse.**

"How can it be worse than a boy being rude to you?" asked Alice with her mind. Edward growled at her.

**It was better because it wasn't raining yet, though the clouds were dense and opaque. It was easier because I knew what to expect of my day. Mike came to sit by me in English, and walked me to my next class, with Chess Club Eric glaring at him all the while; that was nattering. People didn't look at me quite as much as they had yesterday. I sat with a big group at lunch that included Mike, Eric, Jessica, and several other people whose names and faces I now remembered. I began to feel like I was treading water, instead of drowning in it.**

"Well, at least she's made friends. And she is starting to get comfortable with her classmates" said Emse, her family nodded.

**It was worse because I was tired; I still couldn't sleep with the wind echoing around the house. It was worse because Mr. Varner called on me in Trig when my hand wasn't raised and I had the wrong answer. It was miserable because I had to play volleyball, and the one time I didn't cringe out of the way of the ball, I hit my teammate in the head with it. And it was worse because Edward Cullen wasn't in school at all.**

"I think the girl's got a crush on my baby brother" smirked Emmett. Edward looked at him with his eyebrow raised.

"Do you fancy her too?" asked Rosalie, seeing the look.

"Of course not, she's just a character in a book."

**All morning I was dreading lunch, fearing his bizarre glares. Part of me wanted to confront him and demand to know what his problem was. While I was lying sleepless in my bed, I even imagined what I would say. But I knew myself too well to think I would really have the guts to do it. I made the Cowardly Lion look like the terminator.**

Edward snorted. Rosalie and Alice shared the 'he's got a crush' look.

**But when I walked into the cafeteria with Jessica - trying to keep my eyes from sweeping the place for him, and failing entirely - I saw that his four siblings of sorts were sitting together at the same table, and he was not with them.**

"You probably left town to protect her from you" suggested Carlisle.

**Mike intercepted us and steered us to his table. Jessica seemed elated by the attention, and her friends quickly joined us. But as I tried to listen to their easy chatter, I was terribly uncomfortable, waiting nervously for the moment he would arrive. I hoped that he would simply ignore me when he came, and prove my suspicions false.**

**He didn't come, and as time passed I grew more and more tense.**

**I walked to Biology with more confidence when, by the end of lunch, he still hadn't showed. Mike, who was taking on the qualities of a golden retriever, walked faithfully by my side to class. I held my breath at the door, but Edward Cullen wasn't there, either. I exhaled and went to my seat. Mike followed, talking about an upcoming trip to the beach. He lingered by my desk till the bell rang. Then he smiled at me wistfully and went to sit by a girl with braces and a bad perm. It looked like I was going to have to do something about Mike, and it wouldn't be easy. In a town like this, where everyone lived on top of everyone else, diplomacy was essential. I had never been enormously tactful; I had no practice dealing with overly friendly boys.**

"Well, once you and Edward start dating, you won't have to bother with them ever again" said Alice. Edward glared at her. Everyone else agreed.

**I was relieved that I had the desk to myself, that Edward was absent. I told myself that repeatedly. But I couldn't get rid of the nagging suspicion that I was the reason he wasn't there. It was ridiculous, and egotistical, to think that I could affect anyone that strongly. It was impossible. And yet I couldn't stop worrying that it was true.**

"Aw, Bella feels guilty" said Jasper, shocking his family.

**When the school day was finally done, and the blush was fading out of my cheeks from the volleyball incident, I changed quickly back into my jeans and navy blue sweater. I hurried from the girls' locker room, pleased to find that I had successfully evaded my retriever friend for the moment. I walked swiftly out to the parking lot. It was crowded now with fleeing students. I got in my truck and dug through my bag to make sure I had what I needed.**

**Last night I'd discovered that Charlie couldn't cook much besides fried eggs and bacon. So I requested that I be assigned kitchen detail for the duration of my stay. He was willing enough to hand over the keys to the banquet hall. I also found out that he had no food in the house. So I had my shopping list and the cash from the jar in the cupboard labelled FOOD, MONEY, and I was on my way to the Thriftway.**

"So, she can cook" said Edward, "yeah, and didn't get it from her dad," said Emmett.

**I gunned my deafening engine to life, ignoring the heads that turned in my direction, and backed carefully into a place in the line of cars that were waiting to exit the parking lot. As I waited, trying to pretend that the earsplitting rumble was coming from someone else's car, I saw the two Cullens and the Hale twins getting into their car. It was the shiny new Volvo. Of course. I hadn't noticed their clothes before - I'd been too mesmerized by their faces. Now that I looked, it was obvious that they were all dressed exceptionally well; simply, but in clothes that subtly hinted at designer origins. With their remarkable good looks, the style with which they carried themselves, they could have worn dishrags and pulled it off. It seemed excessive for them to have both looks and money. But as far as I could tell, life worked that way most of the time. It didn't look as if it bought them any acceptance here.**

"Well, humans are supposed to naturally fear us, not be intrested in what we drive or wear" said Carlisle.

Emmett smirked, and the family saw Edward cringed at something in Emmett's head.

**No, I didn't fully believe that. The isolation must be their desire; I couldn't imagine any door that wouldn't be opened by that degree of beauty.**

"Or they're scared of us" said Jasper.

**They looked at my noisy truck as I passed them, just like everyone else. I kept my eyes straight forward and was relieved when I finally was free of the school grounds.**

"School is a prison" joked Edward.

**The Thriftway was not far from the school, just a few streets south, off the highway. It was nice to be inside the supermarket; it felt normal. I did the shopping at home, and I fell into the pattern of the familiar task gladly. The store was big enough inside that I couldn't hear the tapping of the rain on the roof to remind me where I was.**

"So, she does like shopping" said Alice, smiling.

"Yeah, for food" said Emmett.

"I am still counting on it" said Alice as she turned back to Jasper.

**When I got home, I unloaded all the groceries, stuffing them in wherever I could find an open space. I hoped Charlie wouldn't mind. I wrapped potatoes in foil and stuck them in the oven to bake, covered a steak in marinade and balanced it on top of a carton of eggs in the fridge.**

"She's speaking a foreign language" said Emmett.

"No, she's cooking" said Esme.

"Exactly, now baseball" said Emmett.

**When I was finished with that, I took my book bag upstairs. Before starting my homework, I changed into a pair of dry sweats, pulled my damp hair up into a pony-tail, and checked my e-mail for the first time. I had three messages.**

"Is she really that popular?" joked Rosalie.

"Her email's won't come from shopping sites" said Alice.

"I hate it, every twenty years I have to change the email and sign up for the sites all over again" said Rosalie. Alice rolled her eyes.

**"Bella," my mum wrote...**

"Okay, so it's her mum" said Alice. Esme smiled, Bella and her mum have such a good relationship.

**Write me as soon as you get in. Tell me how your flight was. Is it raining? I miss you already. I'm almost finished packing for Florida, but I can't find my pink blouse. Do you know where I put it? Phil says hi. Mom.**

**I sighed and went to the next. It was sent eight hours after the first.**

"Her mother is a worrier" said Edward, with a smirk.

**"Bella," she wrote...**

**Why haven't you e-mailed me yet? What are you waiting for? Mom.**

**The last was from this morning.**

**Isabella,**

**If I haven't heard from you by 5:30 p.m. today I'm calling Charlie.**

**I checked the clock. I still had an hour, but my mom was well known for jumping the gun.**

**Mom,**

**Calm down. I'm writing right now. Don't do anything .**

**I sent that, and began again.**

"She's cautious, at least her mum won't be attacking Charlie now" said Carlisle, getting a chuckle out of his family.

**Mom,**

**Everything is great. Of course it's raining. I was waiting for something to write about. School isn't bad, just a little repetitive. I met some nice kids who sit by me at lunch.**

**Your blouse is at the dry cleaners - you were supposed to pick it up Friday.**

**Charlie bought me a truck, can you believe it? I love it. It's old, but really sturdy, which is good, you know, for me.**

**I miss you, too. I'll write again soon, but I'm not going to check my e-mail every five minutes. Relax, breathe. I love you. Bella.**

**I had decided to read Wuthering Heights - the novel we were currently studying in English - yet again for the fun of it, and that's what I was doing when Charlie came home. I'd lost track of the time, and I hurried downstairs to take the potatoes out and put the steak in to broil.**

"Again, a different language" said Emmett, Esme rolled her eyes.

**"Bella?" my father called out when he heard me on the stairs.**

**Who else? I thought to myself.**

"Indeed, who else?" asked Edward. Jasper snorted.

**"Hey, Dad, welcome home."**

**"Thanks." He hung up his gun belt and stepped out of his boots as I bustled about the kitchen. As far as I was aware, he'd never shot the gun on the job. But he kept it ready. When I came here as a child, he would always remove the bullets as soon as he walked in the door. I guess he considered me old enough now not to shoot myself by accident, and not depressed enough to shoot myself on purpose.**

"You better watch out Edward, Charlie owns a gun" joked Emmett. Edward ignored him. Like any bullets can hurt.

**"What's for dinner?" he asked warily. My mother was an imaginative cook, and her experiments weren't always edible. I was surprised, and sad, that he seemed to remember that far back.**

**"Steak and potatoes," I answered, and he looked relieved.**

"Unless, she spiked it with poison" said Jasper. Edward looked at him. Alice rolled her eyes, even she didn't understand her husband's humour.

**He seemed to feel awkward standing in the kitchen doing nothing; he lumbered into the living room to watch TV while I worked. We were both more comfortable that way. I made a salad while the steaks cooked, and set the table.**

**I called him in when dinner was ready, and he sniffed appreciatively as he walked into the room.**

**"Smells good, Bell."**

**"Thanks."**

**We ate in silence for a few minutes. It wasn't uncomfortable. Neither of us was bothered by the quiet. In some ways, we were well suited for living together.**

"True, but the house would be boring" said Esme, thinking of her children and their constant movement.

**"So, how did you like school? Have you made any friends?" he asked as he was taking seconds.**

**"Well, I have a few classes with a girl named Jessica. I sit with her friends at lunch. And there's this boy, Mike, who's very seems pretty nice." With one outstanding exception.**

**"That must be Mike Newton. Nice kid - nice family. His dad owns the sporting goods store just outside of town. He makes a good living off all the backpackers who come through here."**

Edward shook his head. Why did he start thinking of Mike Newton as a enemy?

**"Do you know the Cullen family?" I asked hesitantly.**

"You go for it Bella" said Alice. Edward just looked at her.

**"Dr. Cullen's family? Sure. Dr. Cullen's a great man."**

Carlisle smiled at that comment. If he could blush, he would have.

**"They... the kids... are a little different. They don't seem to fit in very well at school."**

**Charlie surprised me by looking angry.**

**"People in this town," he muttered. "Dr. Cullen is a brilliant surgeon who could probably work in any hospital in the world, make ten times the salary he gets here," he continued, getting louder. "We're lucky to have him - lucky that his wife wanted to live in a small town. He's an asset to the community, and all of those kids are well behaved and polite. I had my doubts, when they first moved in, with all those adopted teenagers. I thought we might have some problems with them. But they're all very mature - I haven't had one speck of trouble from any of them. That's more than I can say for the children of some folks who have lived in this town for generations. And they stick together the way a family should - camping trips every other weekend... Just because they're newcomers, people have to talk."**

"Wow, we do have a supporter" whispered Carlisle, knowing that if he could, he would be bright red by now.

**It was the longest speech I'd ever heard Charlie make. He must feel strongly about whatever people were saying.**

**I backpedaled. "They seemed nice enough to me. I just noticed they kept to themselves. They're all very attractive," I added, trying to be more complimentary.**

**"You should see the doctor," Charlie said, laughing. "It's a good thing he's happily married. A lot of the nurses at the hospital have a hard time concentrating on their work with him around."**

"They go near him, I'll rip them" said Esme. Carlisle chuckled and wrapped his arms around his wife.

**We lapsed back into silence as we finished eating. He cleared the table while I started on the dishes. He went back to the TV, and after I finished washing the dishes by hand - no dishwasher - I went upstairs unwillingly to work on my math homework. I could feel a tradition in the night it was finally quiet. I fell asleep quickly, exhausted.**

"Maths does that to a person" said Edward. His siblings agreed.

"But you've done it more than a hundred times" said Esme.

"That where humans have it easy" said Alice. Jasper quickly started to read before a fight broke out.

**The rest of the week was uneventful. I got used to the routine of my classes. By Friday I was able to recognize, if not name, almost all the students at school. In Gym, the kids on my team learned not to pass me the ball and to step quickly in front of me if the other team tried to take advantage of my weakness. I happily stayed out of their way.**

"Nice plan" said Rosalie.

**Edward Cullen didn't come back to school.**

Everyone looked at Edward again, she did seem to keep thinking about Edward a lot.

**Every day, I watched anxiously until the rest of the Cullens entered the cafeteria without him. Then I could relax and join in the lunchtime conversation. Mostly it centered around a trip to the La Push Ocean Park in two weeks that Mike was putting together. I was invited, and I had agreed to go, more out of politeness than desire. Beaches should be hot and dry.**

**By Friday I was perfectly comfortable entering my Biology class, no longer worried that Edward would be there. For all I knew, he had dropped out of school. I tried not to think about him, but I couldn't totally suppress the worry that I was responsible for his continued absence, ridiculous as it seemed.**

"It's not your fault" said Edward, knowing that he was doing it to protect a human's life.

**My first weekend in Forks passed without incident. Charlie, unused to spending time in the usually empty house, worked most of the weekend. I cleaned the house, got ahead on my homework, and wrote my mom more bogusly cheerful e-mail. I did drive to the library Saturday, but it was so poorly stocked that I didn't bother to get a card; I would have to make a date to visit Olympia or Seattle soon and find a good bookstore. I wondered idly what kind of gas mileage the truck got... and shuddered at the thought.**

Rosalie also shuddered at the thought.

**The rain stayed soft over the weekend, quiet, so I was able to sleep well.**

**People greeted me in the parking lot Monday morning. I didn't know all their names, but I waved back and smiled at everyone. It was colder this morning, but happily not raining. In English, Mike took his accustomed seat by my side. We had a pop quiz on Wuthering Heights. It was straightforward, very easy.**

**All in all, I was feeling a lot more comfortable than I had thought I would feel by this point. More comfortable than I had ever expected to feel here.**

**When we walked out of class, the air was full of swirling bits of white. I could hear people shouting excitedly to each other. The wind bit at my cheeks, my nose.**

**"Wow," Mike said. "It's snowing."**

Emmett, Edward and Jasper smirked. Rosalie and Alice smiled.

**I looked at the little cotton fluffs that were building up along the path and swirling erratically past my face.**

**"Ew." Snow. There went my good day.**

"Aw come on, she's supposed to be your soul mate and she hates everything cool" said Emmett. Edward looked at Emmett confused.

"Soul mate?" he muttered, and his family knew to keep their mouths shut.

**He looked surprised. "Don't you like snow?"**

**"No. That means it's too cold for rain." Obviously. "Besides, I thought it was supposed to come down in flakes - you know, each one unique and all that. These just look like the ends of Q-tips."**

**"Haven't you ever seen snow fall before?" he asked incredulously.**

**"Sure I have." I paused. "On TV."**

Everyone but Edward snorted, because Edward was still wondering about the soul mate comment.

**Mike laughed. And then a big, squishy ball of dripping snow smacked into the back of his head. We both turned to see where it came from. I had my suspicions about Eric, who was walking away, his back toward us - in the wrong direction for his next class. Mike appatently had the same notion. He bent over and began scraping together a pile of the white mush.**

**"I'll see you at lunch, okay?" I kept walking as I spoke. "Once people start throwing wet stuff, I go inside."**

**He just nodded, his eyes on Eric's retreating figure.**

**Throughout the morning, everyone chattered excitedly about the snow; apparently it was the first snowfall of the new year. I kept my mouth shut. Sure, it was drier than rain - until it melted in your socks.**

This time Edward snorted. Bella was smart, and she was sarcastic.

**I walked alertly to the cafeteria with Jessica after Spanish. Mush balls were flying everywhere. I kept a binder in my hands, ready to use it as a shield if necessary. Jessica thought I was hilarious, but something in my expression kept her from lobbing a snowball at me herself.**

"Must have been some expression" said Emmett.

**Mike caught up to us as we walked in the doors, laughing, with ice melting the spikes in his hair. He and Jessica were talking animatedly about the snow fight as we got in line to buy food. I glanced toward that table in the corner out of habit. And then I froze where I stood. There were five people at the table.**

"Edward?" asked Alice. Edward looked at her and she saw the shock in his eyes. What was he doing back?

**Jessica pulled on my arm.**

**"Hello? Bella? What do you want?"**

**I looked down; my ears were hot. I had no reason to feel self-conscious,**

**I reminded myself. I hadn't done anything wrong.**

**"What's with Bella?" Mike asked Jessica.**

**"Nothing," I answered. "I'll just get a soda today." I caught up to the end of the line.**

**"Aren't you hungry?" Jessica asked.**

**"Actually, I feel a little sick," I said, my eyes still on the floor.**

**I waited for them to get their food, and then followed them to a table, my eyes on my feet.**

**I sipped my soda slowly, my stomach churning. Twice Mike asked, with unnecessary concern, how I was feeling. I told him it was nothing, but I was wondering if I should play it up and escape to the nurse's office for the next hour. Ridiculous. I shouldn't have to run away. I decided to permit myself one glance at the Cullen family's table. If he was glaring at me, I would skip Biology, like the coward I was.**

"I swear to god Edward, if you are glaring at her" threated Alice. Edward looked out the window.

**I kept my head down and glanced up under my lashes. None of them were looking this way. I lifted my head a little. They were laughing. Edward, Jasper, and Emmett all had their hair entirely saturated with melting snow. Alice and Rosalie were leaning away as Emmett shook his dripping hair toward them. They were enjoying the snowy day, just like everyone else - only they looked more like a scene from a movie than the rest of us.**

"Yeah, Vampire Hunters" whispered Jasper, but everyone heard it. Everyone chuckled.

**But, aside from the laughter and playfulness, there was something different, and I couldn't quite pinpoint what that difference was. I examined Edward the most carefully. His skin was less pale, I decided - flushed from the snow fight maybe - the circles under his eyes much less noticeable. But there was something more. I pondered, staring, trying to isolate the change.**

"She is checking you out" said Emmett. Edward glared at him. Alice knew that he would be blushing if he were human.

**"Bella, what are you staring at?" Jessica intruded, her eyes following my stare.**

**At that precise moment, his eyes flashed over to meet mine. I dropped my head, letting my hair fall to conceal my face. I was sure, though, in the instant our eyes met, that he didn't look harsh or unfriendly as he had the last time I'd seen him. He looked merely curious again, unsatisfied in some way.**

"You can't read her thoughts, it's obvious" said Alice. Edward just looked at her. Alice gestured to Jasper to continue.

**"Edward Cullen is staring at you," Jessica giggled in my ear.**

**"He doesn't look angry, does he?" I couldn't help asking.**

**"No," she said, sounding confused by my question. "Should he be?"**

**"I don't think he likes me," I confided. I still felt queasy. I put my head down on my arm.**

**"The Cullens don't like anybody... well, they don't notice anybody enough to like them. But he's still staring at you."**

"Edward stop staring" moaned Alice, Rosalie and Esme nodded. The men just looked at them.

**"Stop looking at him," I hissed.**

**She snickered, but she looked away. I raised my head enough to make sure that she did, contemplating violence if she resisted.**

"Bella can fight?" asked Edward, ignoring the glee that filled Alice's thoughts.

**Mike interrupted us then - he was planning an epic battle of the blizzard in the parking lot after school and wanted us to join. Jessica agreed enthusiastically. The way she looked at Mike left little doubt that she would be up for anything he suggested. I kept silent. I would have to hide in the gym until the parking lot cleared.**

Again, Edward laughed.

**For the rest of the lunch hour I very carefully kept my eyes at my own table. I decided to honor the bargain I'd made with myself. Since he didn't look angry, I would go to Biology. My stomach did frightened little flips at the thought of sitting next to him again.**

"Frightened or... " began Emmett but Esme growled at him, and when Esme growls at you, you shut up.

**I didn't really want to walk to class with Mike as usual - he seemed to be a popular target for the snowball snipers - but when we went to the door, everyone besides me groaned in unison. It was raining, washing all traces of the snow away in clear, icy ribbons down the side of the walkway. I pulled my hood up, secretly pleased. I would be free to go straight home after Gym.**

**Mike kept up a string of complaints on the way to building four.**

**Once inside the classroom, I saw with relief that my table was still empty. Mr. Banner was walking around the room, distributing one microscope and box of slides to each table. Class didn't start for a few minutes, and the room buzzed with conversation. I kept my eyes away from the door, doodling idly on the cover of my notebook.**

**I heard very clearly when the chair next to me moved, but my eyes stayed carefully focused on the pattern I was drawing.**

**"Hello," said a quiet, musical voice.**

Silence filled the room. Edward had frozen on his chair. Esme and Carlisle were staring at him. Alice as smiling. Rosalie looked like she was deep in thought. Emmett was smirked and Jasper was reading ahead.

**I looked up, stunned that he was speaking to me. He was sitting as far away from me as the desk allowed, but his chair was angled toward me. His hair was dripping wet, disheveled - even so, he looked like he'd just finished shooting a commercial for hair gel. His dazzling face was friendly, open, a slight smile on his flawless lips. But his eyes were careful.**

**"My name is Edward Cullen," he continued. "I didn't have a chance to introduce myself last week. You must be Bella Swan."**

**My mind was spinning with confusion. Had I made up the whole thing? He was perfectly polite now. I had to speak; he was waiting. But I couldn't think of anything conventional to say.**

**"H-how do you know my name?" I stammered.**

Edward has begun to move, he was slowly inching towards the book.

**He laughed a soft, enchanting laugh.**

Edward had took the book from Jasper, sat down and started to read. Everyone just accepted it.

**"Oh, I think everyone knows your name. The whole town's been waiting for you to arrive."**

**I grimaced. I knew it was something like that.**

**"No," I persisted stupidly. "I meant, why did you call me Bella?"**

**He seemed confused. "Do you prefer Isabella?"**

Edward smiled when he said the name.

**"No, I like Bella," I said. "But I think Charlie - I mean my dad - must call me Isabella behind my back - that's what everyone here seems to know me as," I tried to explain, feeling like an utter moron.**

**"Oh." He let it drop. I looked away awkwardly.**

**Thankfully, Mr. Banner started class at that moment. I tried to concentrate as he explained the lab we would be doing today. The slides in the box were out of order. Working as lab partners, we had to separate the slides of onion root tip cells into the phases of mitosis they represented and label them accordingly. We weren't supposed to use our books. In twenty minutes, he would be coming around to see who had it right.**

**"Get started," he commanded.**

**"Ladies first, partner?" Edward asked. I looked up to see him smiling a crooked smile so beautiful that I could only stare at him like an idiot.**

Alice smiled even more, she was beginning to look like an idiot.

**"Or I could start, if you wish." The smile faded; he was obviously wondering if I was mentally competent.**

Edward smiled again, he doubt that his future self would think like that.

**"No," I said, flushing. "I'll go ahead."**

**I was showing off, just a little. I'd already done this lab, and I knew what I was looking for. It should be easy. I snapped the first slide into place under the microscope and adjusted it quickly to the 40X objective. I studied the slide briefly.**

**My assessment was confident. "Prophase."**

**"Do you mind if I look?" he asked as I began to remove the slide. His hand caught mine, to stop me, as he asked. His fingers were ice-cold, like he'd been holding them in a snowdrift before class. But that wasn't why I jerked my hand away so quickly. When he touched me, it stung my hand as if an electric current had passed through us.**

"That happened with me and Jasper, same with Emmett and Rosalie. I think it also happened with Carlisle and Esme" said Alice. Edward looked at her.

"So, me and Bella are soul mates" said Edward. Then he went back to the book.

**"I'm sorry," he muttered, pulling his hand back immediately. However, he continued to reach for the microscope. I watched him, still staggered, as he examined the slide for an even shorter time than I had.**

**"Prophase," he agreed, writing it neatly in the first space on our worksheet. He swiftly switched out the first slide for the second, and then glanced at it cursorily.**

**"Anaphase," he murmured, writing it down as he spoke.**

**I kept my voice indifferent. "May I?"**

"She's challenging you" said Alice. Edward looked at her over the book before continuing to read.

**He smirked and pushed the microscope to me.**

**I looked through the eyepiece eagerly, only to be disappointed. Dang it, he was right.**

**"Slide three?" I held out my hand without looking at him.**

**He handed it to me; it seemed like he was being careful not to touch my skin again.**

**I took the most fleeting look I could manage.**

**"Interphase." I passed him the microscope before he could ask for it. He took a swift peek, and then wrote it down. I would have written it while he looked, but his clear, elegant script intimidated me. I didn't want to spoil the page with my clumsy scrawl.**

**We were finished before anyone else was close. I could see Mike and his partner comparing two slides again and again, and another group had their book open under the table.**

**Which left me with nothing to do but try to not look at him... unsuccessfully. I glanced up, and he was staring at me, that same inexplicable look of frustration in his eyes. Suddenly I identified that subtle difference in his face.**

**"Did you get contacts?" I blurted out unthinkingly.**

**He seemed puzzled by my unexpected question. "No."**

**"Oh," I mumbled. "I thought there was something different about your eyes."**

"She must really like you to notice the difference in your eyes" said Esme. Edward shrugged.

**He shrugged, and looked away.**

**In fact, I was sure there was something different. I vividly remembered the flat black color of his eyes the last time he'd glared at me - the color was striking against the background of his pale skin and his auburn hair. Today, his eyes were a completely different color: a strange ocher, darker than butterscotch, but with the same golden tone. I didn't understand how that could be, unless he was lying for some reason about the contacts. Or maybe Forks was making me crazy in the literal sense of the word.**

**I looked down. His hands were clenched into hard fists again.**

**Mr. Banner came to our table then, to see why we weren't working. He looked over our shoulders to glance at the completed lab, and then stared more intently to check the answers.**

**"So, Edward, didn't you think Isabella should get a chance with the microscope?" Mr. Banner asked.**

Emmett called Mr Banner a bad word.

**"Bella," Edward corrected automatically. "Actually, she identified three of the five."**

**Mr. Banner looked at me now; his expression was skeptical.**

**"Have you done this lab before?" he asked.**

**I smiled sheepishly. "Not with onion root."**

**"Whitefish blastula?"**

**"Yeah."**

**Mr. Banner nodded. "Were you in an advanced placement program in Phoenix?"**

**"Yes."**

**"Well," he said after a moment, "I guess it's good you two are lab partners." He mumbled something else as he walked away. After he left, I began doodling on my notebook again.**

**"It's too bad about the snow, isn't it?" Edward asked. I had the feeling that he was forcing himself to make small talk with me. Paranoia swept over me again. It was like he had heard my conversation with Jessica at lunch and was trying to prove me wrong.**

**"Not really," I answered honestly, instead of pretending to be normal like everyone else. I was still trying to dislodge the stupid feeling of suspicion, and I couldn't concentrate.**

**"You don't like the cold." It wasn't a question.**

**"Or the wet."**

**"Forks must be a difficult place for you to live," he mused.**

**"You have no idea," I muttered darkly.**

"Bella being darkly" said Esme, Carlisle raised her eyebrow.

**He looked fascinated by what I said, for some reason I couldn't imagine. His face was such a distraction that I tried not to look at it any more than courtesy absolutely demanded.**

**"Why did you come here, then?"**

**No one had asked me that - not straight out like he did, demanding.**

**"It's... complicated."**

**"I think I can keep up," he pressed.**

"Why do you want to know so much about her?" wondered Rosalie.

**I paused for a long moment, and then made the mistake of meeting his gaze. His dark gold eyes confused me, and I answered without thinking.**

**"My mother got remarried," I said.**

**"That doesn't sound so complex," he disagreed, but he was suddenly sympathetic. "When did that happen?"**

**"Last September." My voice sounded sad, even to me.**

**"And you don't like him," Edward surmised, his tone still kind.**

**"No, Phil is fine. Too young, maybe, but nice enough."**

**"Why didn't you stay with them?"**

**I couldn't fathom his interest, but he continued to stare at me with penetrating eyes, as if my dull life's story was somehow vitally important.**

"To you, it probably was" said Alice, even her hair was smiling.

**"Phil travels a lot. He plays ball for a living." I half-smiled.**

**"Have I heard of him?" he asked, smiling in response.**

**"Probably not. He doesn't play well. Strictly minor league. He moves around a lot."**

**"And your mother sent you here so that she could travel with him." He said it as an assumption again, not a question.**

**My chin raised a fraction. "No, she did not send me here. I sent myself."**

**His eyebrows knit together. "I don't understand," he admitted, and he seemed unnecessarily frustrated by that fact.**

"You cannot read her thoughts, she perfect for you" said Emmett, he was smiling.

**I sighed. Why was I explaining this to him? He continued to stare at me with obvious curiosity.**

**"She stayed with me at first, but she missed him. It made her unhappy... so I decided it was time to spend some quality time with Charlie." My voice was glum by the time I finished.**

**"But now you're unhappy," he pointed out.**

**"And?" I challenged.**

**"That doesn't seem fair." He shrugged, but his eyes were still intense.**

**I laughed without humor. "Hasn't anyone ever told you? Life isn't fair."**

**"I believe I have heard that somewhere before," he agreed dryly.**

Edward snorted.

**"So that's all," I insisted, wondering why he was still staring at me that way.**

**His gaze became appraising. "You put on a good show," he said slowly. "But I'd be willing to bet that you're suffering more than you let anyone see."**

**I grimaced at him, resisting the impulse to stick out my tongue like a five-year-old, and looked away.**

**"Am I wrong?"**

"Edward is nothing wrong" smirked Carlisle.

**I tried to ignore him.**

**"I didn't think so," he murmured smugly.**

**"Why does it matter to you?" I asked, irritated. I kept my eyes away, watching the teacher make his rounds.**

**"That's a very good question," he muttered, so quietly that I wondered if he was talking to himself. However, after a few seconds of silence, I decided that was the only answer I was going to get.**

**I sighed, scowling at the blackboard.**

"What did the blackboard ever do to you" chuckled Emmett.

**"Am I annoying you?" he asked. He sounded amused.**

**I glanced at him without thinking... and told the truth again. "Not exactly. I'm more annoyed at myself. My face is so easy to read - my mother always calls me her open book." I frowned.**

**"On the contrary, I find you very difficult to read." Despite everything that I'd said and he'd guessed, he sounded like he meant it.**

**"You must be a good reader then," I replied.**

**"Usually." He smiled widely, flashing a set of perfect, ultrawhite teeth.**

"She didn't cringe at the teeth" muttered Edward, with the hint of a smile.

**Mr. Banner called the class to order then, and I turned with relief to listen. I was in disbelief that I'd just explained my dreary life to this bizarre, beautiful boy who may or may not despise me. He'd seemed engrossed in our conversation, but now I could see, from the corner of my eye, that he was leaning away from me again, his hands gripping the edge of the table with unmistakable tension.**

**I tried to appear attentive as Mr. Banner illustrated, with transparencies on the overhead projector, what I had seen without difficulty through the microscope. But my thoughts were unmanageable.**

**When the bell finally rang, Edward rushed as swiftly and as gracefully from the room as he had last Monday. And, like last Monday, I stared after him in amazement.**

**Mike skipped quickly to my side and picked up my books for me. I imagined him with a wagging tail.**

**"That was awful," he groaned. "They all looked exactly the same. You're lucky you had Cullen for a partner."**

**"I didn't have any trouble with it," I said, stung by his assumption. I regretted the snub instantly. "I've done the lab before, though," I added before he could get his feelings hurt.**

**"Cullen seemed friendly enough today," he commented as we shrugged into our raincoats. He didn't seem pleased about it.**

"Well, of course he isn't. One of the hottest guys in the school was just talking to a girl he fancies" said Rosalie.

**I tried to sound indifferent. "I wonder what was with him last Monday."**

**I couldn't concentrate on Mike's chatter as we walked to Gym, and RE. didn't do much to hold my attention, either. Mike was on my team today. He chivalrously covered my position as well as his own, so my woolgathering was only interrupted when it was my turn to serve; my team ducked warily out of the way every time I was up.**

**The rain was just a mist as I walked to the parking lot, but I was happier when I was in the dry cab. I got the heater running, for once not caring about the mind-numbing roar of the engine. I unzipped my jacket, put the hood down, and fluffed my damp hair out so the heater could dry it on the way home.**

**I looked around me to make sure it was clear. That's when I noticed the still, white figure. Edward Cullen was leaning against the front door of the Volvo, three cars down from me, and staring intently in my direction. I swiftly looked away and threw the truck into reverse, almost hitting a rusty Toyota Corolla in my haste. Lucky for the Toyota, I stomped on the brake in time. It was just the sort of car that my truck would make scrap metal of. I took a deep breath, still looking out the other side of my car, and cautiously pulled out again, with greater success. I stared straight ahead as I passed the Volvo, but from a peripheral peek, I would swear I saw him laughing.**

"Edward, you and Bella are so made for each other" sighed Alice until there was a flash in the air above her. A slip of paper fell onto her.

_If you guys want to meet Bella, I would send the Bella from book three back to you. Your choice._

* * *

YOU GUYS GET TO CHOOSE IF BELLA COMES TO THE STORY OR NOT. I HAVE A POLL RUNNING UNTIL 13TH JANUARY 2014.


	5. Chapter 5

"So, should we?" asked Jasper, holding the little note.

"I say that it's Edward's choice" Answered Alice. Edward nodded.

"Is it bad that I want to meet her?" he asked, "I mean, if she's even real?"

"No, Edward, it isn't bad that you want to meet Bella" smiled Esme.

"Yeah, can she come right now?" asked Edward. Another note appeared.

_She'll arrive after one more chapter. Here's a piece of Bella's clothing so you can get used to her scent - a least a little._ Sure enough, a top appeared and landed on Edward's lap. His eyes darkened and his mouth filled with venom. But he stopped breathing and slowly lifted the top. He pressed it against his nose and sniffed. Carlisle took the book off Edward as he seemed like he was never going to remove the top any time soon.

**3. PHENOMENON**

**When I opened my eyes in the morning, something was different.**

"Yeah, it was a new day" smirked Emmett.

**It was the light. It was still the gray-green light of a cloudy day in the forest, but it was clearer somehow. I realized there was no fog veiling my window.**

**I jumped up to look outside, and then groaned in horror.**

**A fine layer of snow covered the yard, dusted the top of my truck, and whitened the road. But that wasn't the worst part. All the rain from yesterday had frozen solid - coating the needles on the trees in fantastic, gorgeous patterns, and making the driveway a deadly ice slick. I had enough trouble not falling down when the ground was dry; it might be safer for me to go back to bed now.**

"Yeah, that might be for the best" smirked Alice.

**Charlie had left for work before I got downstairs. In a lot of ways, living with Charlie was like having my own place, and I found myself reveling in the aloneness instead of being lonely.**

"That is a little sad" said Esme.

"A bit like our Eddie here" said Emmett. Edward growled.

**I threw down a quick bowl of cereal and some orange juice from the carton. I felt excited to go to school, and that scared me. I knew it wasn't the stimulating learning environment I was anticipating, or seeing my new set of friends. If I was being honest with myself, I knew I was eager to get to school because I would see Edward Cullen. And that was very, very stupid.**

"Oh, she is very much in love" sighed Alice. Rosalie pulled a face.

"And with the way Edward is sniffing that top, so's he" said Carlisle. Edward glared, lowering the top a little.

**I should be avoiding him entirely after my brainless and embarrassing babbling yesterday. And I was suspicious of him; why should he lie about his eyes? I was still frightened of the hostility I sometimes felt emanating from him, and I was still tongue-tied whenever I pictured his perfect face. I was well aware that my league and his league were spheres that did not touch. So I shouldn't be at all anxious to see him today.**

"She thinks so little of herself, we'll need to fix that" said Jasper, Alice smiled lovingly at him.

**It took every ounce of my concentration to make it down the icy brick driveway alive. I almost lost my balance when I finally got to the truck, but I managed to cling to the side mirror and save myself. Clearly, today was going to be nightmarish.**

**Driving to school, I distracted myself from my fear of falling and my unwanted speculations about Edward Cullen by thinking about Mike and Eric, and the obvious difference in how teenage boys responded to me here. I was sure I looked exactly the same as I had in Phoenix. Maybe it was just that the boys back home had watched me pass slowly through all the awkward phases of adolescence and still thought of me that way. Perhaps it was because I was a novelty here, where novelties were few and far between. Possibly my crippling clumsiness was seen as endearing rather than pathetic, casting me as a damsel in distress. Whatever the reason, Mike's puppy dog behavior and Eric's apparent rivalry with him were disconcerting. I wasn't sure if I didn't prefer being ignored.**

"You and me both" muttered Rosalie. Emmett nodded in agreement with Rosalie.

**My truck seemed to have no problem with the black ice that covered the roads. I drove very slowly, though, not wanting to carve a path of destruction through Main Street.**

Emmett started to laugh. Oh how he would love to see that.

**When I got out of my truck at school, I saw why I'd had so little trouble. Something silver caught my eye, and I walked to the back of the truck - carefully holding the side for support - to examine my tires. There were thin chains crisscrossed in diamond shapes around them. Charlie had gotten up who knows how early to put snow chains on my truck. My throat suddenly felt tight. I wasn't used to being taken care of, and Charlie's unspoken concern caught me by surprise.**

"See, now that's love" said Esme.

"We'll bring you a deer next time we go hunting" said Alice.

**I was standing by the back corner of the truck, struggling to fight back the sudden wave of emotion the snow chains had brought on, when I heard an odd sound.**

**It was a high-pitched screech, and it was fast becoming painfully loud. I looked up, startled.**

"No!" yelled Edward, feeling that she was about to be in danger, the top still held in his grasp.

**I saw several things simultaneously. Nothing was moving in slow motion, the way it does in the movies. Instead, the adrenaline rush seemed to make my brain work much faster, and I was able to absorb in clear detail several things at once.**

"That is how we live everyday" said Jasper.

**Edward Cullen was standing four cars down from me, staring at me in horror. His face stood out from a sea of faces, all frozen in the same mask of shock. But of more immediate importance was the dark blue van that was skidding, tires locked and squealing against the brakes, spinning wildly across the ice of the parking lot. It was going to hit the back corner of my truck, and I was standing between them. I didn't even have time to close my eyes.**

"Please be okay" whispered Alice, her fingers crossed.

**Just before I heard the shattering crunch of the van folding around the truck bed, something hit me, hard, but not from the direction I was expecting. My head cracked against the icy blacktop, and I felt something solid and cold pinning me to the ground. I was lying on the pavement behind the tan car I'd parked next to. But I didn't have a chance to notice anything else, because the van was still coming. It had curled gratingly around the end of the truck and, still spinning and sliding, was about to collide with me again.**

"Seriously, Edward it seems like you have your work cut out for you" laughed Carlisle.

"Says her doctor" said Edward. Everyone else laughed.

**A low oath made me aware that someone was with me, and the voice was impossible not to recognize. Two long, white hands shot out protectively in front of me, and the van shuddered to a stop a foot from my face, the large hands fitting providentially into a deep dent in the side of the van's body.**

**Then his hands moved so fast they blurred. One was suddenly gripping under the body of the van, and something was dragging me, swinging my legs around like a rag doll's, till they hit the tire of the tan car. A groaning metallic thud hurt my ears, and the van settled, glass popping, onto the asphalt - exactly where, a second ago, my legs had been.**

"Thank god" whispered Jasper.

**It was absolutely silent for one long second before the screaming began. In the abrupt bedlam, I could hear more than one person shouting my name. But more clearly than all the yelling, I could hear Edward Cullen's low, frantic voice in my ear.**

"Aw, sweet" sighed Alice and Esme.

**"Bella? Are you all right?"**

**"I'm fine." My voice sounded strange. I tried to sit up, and realized he was holding me against the side of his body in an iron grasp.**

"Edward" sighed Esme. Edward rolled his eyes, the scent still entering his nostrils.

**"Be careful," he warned as I struggled. "I think you hit your head pretty hard."**

**I became aware of a throbbing ache centered above my left ear.**

**"Ow," I said, surprised.**

**"That's what I thought." His voice, amazingly, sounded like he was suppressing laughter.**

"She makes you laugh" said Rosalie.

**"How in the..." I trailed off, trying to clear my head, get my bearings. "How did you get over here so fast?"**

**"I was standing right next to you, Bella," he said, his tone serious again.**

**I turned to sit up, and this time he let me, releasing his hold around my waist and sliding as far from me as he could in the limited space. I looked at his concerned, innocent expression and was disoriented again by the force of his gold-colored eyes. What was I asking him?**

There was muffled laughter.

**And then they found us, a crowd of people with tears streaming down their faces, shouting at each other, shouting at us.**

"They were actually crying for her" said Emmett.

**"Don't move," someone instructed.**

**"Get Tyler out of the van!" someone else shouted.**

**There was a flurry of activity around us. I tried to get up, but Edward's cold hand pushed my shoulder down.**

**"Just stay put for now."**

**"But it's cold," I complained. It surprised me when he chuckled under his breath. There was an edge to the sound.**

**"You were over there," I suddenly remembered, and his chuckle stopped short. "You were by your car."**

**His expression turned hard. "No, I wasn't."**

"There is no point in denying it" said Jasper.

**"I saw you." All around us was chaos. I could hear the gruffer voices of adults arriving on the scene. But I obstinately held on to our argument; I was right, and he was going to admit it.**

"She is so stubborn" laughed Alice.

**"Bella, I was standing with you, and I pulled you out of the way." He unleashed the full, devastating power of his eyes on me, as if trying to communicate something crucial.**

**"No." I set my jaw.**

**The gold in his eyes blazed. "Please, Bella."**

**"Why?" I demanded.**

**"Trust me," he pleaded, his soft voice overwhelming.**

**I could hear the sirens now. "Will you promise to explain everything to me later?"**

**"Fine," he snapped, abruptly exasperated.**

**"Fine," I repeated angrily.**

"Oh, the fights you two will have" said Esme as she lay her head back. Edward looked at her.

**It took six EMTs and two teachers - Mr. Varner and Coach Clapp - to shift the van far enough away from us to bring the stretchers in. Edward vehemently refused his, and I tried to do the same, but the traitor told them I'd hit my head and probably had a concussion. I almost died of humiliation when they put on the neck brace. It looked like the entire school was there, watching soberly as they loaded me in the back of the ambulance. Edward got to ride in the front. It was maddening.**

"Jealous much" laughed Jasper, Emmett laughed alongside him.

**To make matters worse, Chief Swan arrived before they could get me safely away.**

"Is this town really that small?" asked Edward. Carlisle nodded.

"I feel sorry for Bella, I would hate for that to happen" said Rosalie.

**"Bella!" he yelled in panic when he recognized me on the stretcher.**

**"I'm completely fine, Char - Dad," I sighed. "There's nothing wrong with me."**

**He turned to the closest EMT for a second opinion. I tuned him out to consider the jumble of inexplicable images churning chaotically in my head. When they'd lifted me away from the car, I had seen the deep dent in the tan car's bumper - a very distinct dent that fit the contours of Edward's shoulders... as if he had braced himself against the car with enough force to damage the metal frame...**

"He would have" said Rosalie throwing a glare at Edward - who glared right back at her.

Jasper frowned. He was getting mixed signals from Rosalie.

**And then there was his family, looking on from the distance, with expressions that ranged from disapproval to fury but held no hint of concern for their brother's safety.**

"We're such a caring family" sighed Alice. Emmett, Jasper and Rosalie laughed.

**I tried to think of a logical solution that could explain what I had just seen - a solution that excluded the assumption that I was insane.**

**Naturally, the ambulance got a police escort to the county hospital. I felt ridiculous the whole time they were unloading me. What made it worse was that Edward simply glided through the hospital doors under his own power. I ground my teeth together.**

"She has a temper" said Alice.

"But only when it involves Edward" noted Jasper.

**They put me in the emergency room, a long room with a line of beds ****separated by pastel-patterned curtains. A nurse put a pressure cuff on my arm and a thermometer under my tongue. Since no one bothered pulling the curtain around to give me some privacy, I decided I wasn't obligated to wear the stupid-looking neck brace anymore. When the nurse walked away, I quickly unfastened the Velcro and threw it under the bed.**

**There was another flurry of hospital personnel, another stretcher brought to the bed next to me. I recognized Tyler Crowley from my Government class beneath the bloodstained bandages wrapped tightly around his head. Tyler looked a hundred times worse than I felt. But he was staring anxiously at me.**

**"Bella, I'm so sorry!"**

"Sure he is" muttered Edward, the shirt still in his grasp.

**"I'm fine, Tyler - you look awful, are you all right?" As we spoke, nurses began unwinding his soiled bandages, exposing a myriad of shallow slices all over his forehead and left cheek.**

**He ignored me. "I thought I was going to kill you! I was going too fast, and I hit the ice wrong..." He winced as one nurse started dabbing at his face.**

**"Don't worry about it; you missed me."**

**"How did you get out of the way so fast? You were there, and then you were gone..."**

"Super speed" laughed Emmett.

**"Umm... Edward pulled me out of the way."**

**He looked confused. "Who?"**

Everyone looked at Edward, who shrugged.

**"Edward Cullen - he was standing next to me." I'd always been a terrible liar; I didn't sound convincing at all.**

**"Cullen? I didn't see him... wow, it was all so fast, I guess. Is he okay?"**

**"I think so. He's here somewhere, but they didn't make him use a stretcher."**

Edward smirked.

**I knew I wasn't crazy. What had happened? There was no way to explain away what I'd seen.**

**They wheeled me away then, to X-ray my head. I told them there was nothing wrong, and I was right. Not even a concussion. I asked if I could leave, but the nurse said I had to talk to a doctor first. So I was trapped in the ER, waiting, harassed by Tyler's constant apologies and promises to make it up to me. No matter how many times I tried to convince him I was fine, he continued to torment himself. Finally, I closed my eyes and ignored him. He kept up a remorseful mumbling.**

**"Is she sleeping?" a musical voice asked. My eyes flew open.**

"Aww" cooed Esme, delighted that her oldest - youngest - son was finally finding his soul mate.

**Edward was standing at the foot of my bed, smirking. I glared at him. It wasn't easy - it would have been more natural to ogle.**

Emmett snorted.

**"Hey, Edward, I'm really sorry -" Tyler began.**

**Edward lifted a hand to stop him.**

**"No blood, no foul," he said, flashing his brilliant teeth. He moved to sit on the edge of Tyler's bed, facing me. He smirked again.**

"You just love to show her your teeth" said Carlisle.

"Maybe I'm trying to scare her away" shrugged Edward.

"That doesn't involve following her if she does wrong" said Alice.

**"So, what's the verdict?" he asked me.**

**"There's nothing wrong with me at all, but they won't let me go," I complained. "How come you aren't strapped to a gurney like the rest of us?"**

**"It's all about who you know," he answered. "But don't worry, I came to spring you."**

"Spring her?" asked Esme.

**Then a doctor walked around the corner, and my mouth fell open. He was**

**young, he was blond... and he was handsomer than any movie star I'd ever seen. He was pale, though, and tired-looking, with circles under his eyes. From Charlie's description, this had to be Edward's father.**

"Oh, I see it now" laughed Esme, Carlisle smiled at her before he continued reading.

**"So, Miss Swan," Dr. Cullen said in a remarkably appealing voice, "how are you feeling?"**

**"I'm fine," I said, for the last time, I hoped.**

**He walked to the lightboard on the wall over my head, and turned it on.**

**"Your X-rays look good," he said. "Does your head hurt? Edward said you hit it pretty hard."**

**"It's fine," I repeated with a sigh, throwing a quick scowl toward Edward.**

**The doctor's cool fingers probed lightly along my skull. He noticed when I winced.**

**"Tender?" he asked.**

**"Not really." I'd had worse.**

"You are such a good doctor" smiled Esme.

"I've had a tonne of experience" smiled Carlisle. Their kids cringed. Like a normal family do when the parents are flirting.

**I heard a chuckle, and looked over to see Edward's patronizing smile. My eyes narrowed.**

**"Well, your father is in the waiting room - you can go home with him now. But come back if you feel dizzy or have trouble with your eyesight at all."**

**"Can't I go back to school?" I asked, imagining Charlie trying to be attentive.**

**"Maybe you should take it easy today."**

**I glanced at Edward. "Does he get to go to school?"**

**"Someone has to spread the good news that we survived," Edward said smugly.**

**"Actually," Dr. Cullen corrected, "most of the school seems to be in the waiting room."**

**"Oh no," I moaned, covering my face with my hands.**

**Dr. Cullen raised his eyebrows. "Do you want to stay?"**

**"No, no!" I insisted, throwing my legs over the side of the bed and hopping down quickly. Too quickly - I staggered, and Dr. Cullen caught me. He looked concerned.**

"Still a great doctor" smiled Esme. Alice pretended to gag.

**"I'm fine," I assured him again. No need to tell him my balance problems had nothing to do with hitting my head.**

Edward chucked. Esme smiled, she was falling in love with that sound.

**"Take some Tylenol for the pain," he suggested as he steadied me.**

**"It doesn't hurt that bad," I insisted.**

**"It sounds like you were extremely lucky," Dr. Cullen said, smiling as he signed my chart with a flourish.**

**"Lucky Edward happened to be standing next to me," I amended with a hard glance at the subject of my statement.**

**"Oh, well, yes," Dr. Cullen agreed, suddenly occupied with the papers in front of him. Then he looked away, at Tyler, and walked to the next bed. My intuition flickered; the doctor was in on it.**

"Yeah, Doc, you look might suspicious" glared Emmett. Carlisle just stared at him.

**"I'm afraid that you'll have to stay with us just a little bit longer," he said to Tyler, and began checking his cuts.**

**As soon as the doctor's back was turned, I moved to Edward's side.**

**"Can I talk to you for a minute?" I hissed under my breath. He took a step back from me, his jaw suddenly clenched.**

"Looks like Bella isn't the only one who gets angry" said Alice. Edward rolled his eyes.

**"Your father is waiting for you," he said through his teeth.**

**I glanced at Dr. Cullen and Tyler.**

**"I'd like to speak with you alone, if you don't mind," I pressed.**

**He glared, and then turned his back and strode down the long room. I nearly had to run to keep up. As soon as we turned the corner into a short hallway, he spun around to face me.**

**"What do you want?" he asked, sounding annoyed. His eyes were cold.**

**His unfriendliness intimidated me. My words came out with less severity than I'd intended. "You owe me an explanation," I reminded him.**

**"I saved your life - I don't owe you anything."**

"Actually..." began Alice.

"Shut it."

**I flinched back from the resentment in his voice. "You promised."**

**"Bella, you hit your head, you don't know what you're talking about." His tone was cutting.**

**My temper flared now, and I glared defiantly at him. "There's nothing wrong with my head."**

**He glared back. "What do you want from me, Bella?"**

**"I want to know the truth," I said. "I want to know why I'm lying for you."**

**"What do you think happened?" he snapped.**

**It came out in a rush.**

**"All I know is that you weren't anywhere near me - Tyler didn't see you, either, so don't tell me I hit my head too hard. That van was going to crush us both - and it didn't, and your hands left dents in the side of it - and you left a dent in the other car, and you're not hurt at all - and the van should have smashed my legs, but you were holding it up..." I could hear how crazy it sounded, and I couldn't continue. I was so mad I could feel the tears coming; I tried to force them back by grinding my teeth together.**

"She is too observant" said Rosalie.

**He was staring at me incredulously. But his face was tense, defensive.**

**"You think I lifted a van off you?" His tone questioned my sanity, but it only made me more suspicious. It was like a perfectly delivered line by a skilled actor.**

**I merely nodded once, jaw tight.**

**"Nobody will believe that, you know." His voice held an edge of derision now.**

"You're not denying it" smiled Alice.

**"I'm not going to tell anybody." I said each word slowly, carefully controlling my anger.**

**Surprise flitted across his face. "Then why does it matter?"**

**"It matters to me," I insisted. "I don't like to lie - so there'd better be a good reason why I'm doing it."**

**"Can't you just thank me and get over it?"**

**"Thank you." I waited, fuming and expectant.**

**"You're not going to let it go, are you?"**

**"No."**

"She is very determined" said Jasper.

"Or stubborn" said Edward.

**"In that case... I hope you enjoy disappointment."**

**We scowled at each other in silence. I was the first to speak, trying to keep myself focused. I was in danger of being distracted by his livid, glorious face. It was like trying to stare down a destroying angel.**

"I'm no angel" snorted Edward.

"Well, she did say a destroying angel" said Emmett.

**"Why did you even bother?" I asked frigidly.**

**He paused, and for a brief moment his stunning face was unexpectedly vulnerable.**

"You're confused" said Carlisle.

"I don't think you can blame me" said Edward.

**"I don't know," he whispered.**

**And then he turned his back on me and walked away.**

**I was so angry, it took me a few minutes until I could move. When I could walk, I made my way slowly to the exit at the end of the hallway.**

**The waiting room was more unpleasant than I'd feared. It seemed like every face I knew in Forks was there, staring at me. Charlie rushed to my side; I put up my hands.**

"She's defensive" said Jasper. Alice glared at Edward.

**"There's nothing wrong with me," I assured him sullenly. I was still aggravated, not in the mood for chitchat.**

**"What did the doctor say?"**

**"Dr. Cullen saw me, and he said I was fine and I could go home." I sighed. Mike and Jessica and Eric were all there, beginning to converge on us. "Let's go," I urged.**

**Charlie put one arm behind my back, not quite touching me, and led me to the glass doors of the exit. I waved sheepishly at my friends, hoping to convey that they didn't need to worry anymore. It was a huge relief- the first time I'd ever felt that way - to get into the cruiser.**

**We drove in silence. I was so wrapped up in my thoughts that I barely knew Charlie was there. I was positive that Edward's defensive behavior in the hall was a confirmation of the bizarre things I still could hardly believe I'd witnessed.**

**When we got to the house, Charlie finally spoke.**

**"Um... you'll need to call Renée." He hung his head, guilty.**

**I was appalled. "You told Mom!"**

"Of course he did" said Esme.

**"Sorry."**

**I slammed the cruiser's door a little harder than necessary on my way out.**

**My mom was in hysterics, of course. I had to tell her I felt fine at least thirty times before she would calm down. She begged me to come home - forgetting the fact that home was empty at the moment - but her pleas were easier to resist than I would have thought. I was consumed by the mystery Edward presented. And more than a little obsessed by Edward himself. Stupid, stupid, stupid. I wasn't as eager to escape Forks as I should be, as any normal, sane person would be.**

"She's in too deep" sighed Edward, given up, he lifted the top and took another sniff.

**I decided I might as well go to bed early that night. Charlie continued to watch me anxiously, and it was getting on my nerves. I stopped on my way to grab three Tylenol from the bathroom. They did help, and, as the pain eased, I drifted to sleep.**

**That was the first night I dreamed of Edward Cullen.**

"The first night?" asked Alice. Before anyone could answer, there was a bright flash and a figure appeared. Her eyes rolled back up into her head and Isabella Swan fell into Edward's waiting arms - as he had stood up as soon as she appeared.

She fell against him, her head lying on his chest.

He smiled down at her.


End file.
